Arriving
One day in Singapore and already I love air conditioning more than I can say. Air conditioning is my friend. When you walk out of the (mall usually) you're hit by the archetypical wall of heat that people describe in travel books and Graham Greeney colonial type novels. I'm sure I'll get used to it but at the moment, woozy with jet lag I only want to be in chilled mall, MRT (tube/metro) or air conditioned hotel room.
Our hotel room is ace, to say the very least. The very best thing about it is that it has a kettle, mugs and a selection of teas including, ladies and gentlemen my personal tea of choice, earl grey. Ahh. In fact I'm almost surprised there isn't a radio booted up to play radio 4 they've so catered for my needs.
As is the way in posh hotels, they explain the room to you, which I always find rather amusing... 'this is the bathroom, this is the window, this is the door... By the time our bags were brought up (ahh) I had already had a shower and was shuffling around in the complimentary robe and slippers. Edgardo,''the guest services agent - bell'' (I know this because he gave me his card and that's what it says on it) told me that ice could be delivered up to three times a day, the bottled water was complementary and that if we wanted anything sent up we just had to ring the priority services bell on the telephone. He explained the complimentary tea and helped the weight sensitive non complimentary stuff in the fridge to be removed so we could fill it instead with our duty free hall. He opened the cupboard, (when you open the cupboard a light comes on, ahh) and was about to explain the complimentary robe and slippers to me, but then realised that was unnecessary.
When we were both clean we went out into the heat and explored Singapore. So far it seems to be malls and sky scrappers linked by motorways, or rather not linked by motorways, sometimes with no pavement. From what I can see there are no city planners employed in Singapore. Or there are planners but they weren't planning for anyone to want to walk anywhere. There are very occasionally older buildings but mainly it's sky scrappers, malls with that lovely air conditioning I may have mentioned and motorways. It's really not a city set out for pedestrians or strolling. They're expecting you to drive or take the MRT and get into the malls as quickly as possible.
Coming back from dinner in Chinatown in the cooler evening we decided to walk back. We were doing fine until we reached a no man's land of pavementless road and motorway. In the end we caught a taxi back with a very cheerful Malaysian taxi driver who explained things and chuckled away at his own jokes. The Marina Bay area we're staying in is all reclaimed land. Singapore is growing while Venice is sinking. He also talked about the casino in our hotel in the basement. He was very disaproving of the Casino. He talked about collecting people and the happy and sad faces dependent on their winnings of loosings.
Packing & Departure
But before any of the fun started of course there was a whole 'nother kind of fun. We had a fairly frantic week organising and cleaning the house mainly getting it at it shiniest and best so hopefully it will get rented out quickly.
My kind friend S*** arrived on Thursday morning to help with the final clean. Unfortunately at that point there was still an awful lot of packing and clearing to be done. She was very stoic and only said 'Oh dear' and 'did you think about getting proffessional cleaners?' Then she got stuck in clearing the kitchen shelves and scouring layers of grease from around the cooker. I am eternally grateful.
We managed to leave at about 8.30pm and went to my parents house to spend our final night in the UK.
My defacto partner had to go and hand in his laptop, phone and badge back to his boss the at 8.30am on our day of departure. So off he went at 7.30am and my parents and I left the house an hour later arrivng at Heathrow at 9.30. We'd arranged to meet up at the Travelex desk. It turns out there are seven Travelex desks in Terminal 3 at Heathrow. However I narrowed it down to the one where he was collecting our Singapore dollars.
We waited and waited. My Dad went around checking the different desks. Just as I was starting to get worried I got a call from my brother at home in Wimbledon saying Mum had just called him to say J had left his wallet in Wimbledon and he'd found it. Moment's later he turned up, very sweaty and stressed. He'd managed to persuade the guard on the Heathrow express to let him travel for free and pay on arrival and then in the end they'd just let him off paying completely. Thankfully my brother was there and able to send it in a taxi which arrived 5 minutes before we were due to board the plane. The taxi driver had been told to call me when he arrived. The conversation went something like this. Me: Where are you? I don't see you. Him, I'm nearly there. Me: Okay, tell me when you've arrived. Him: Oh, I'm here. Me: Okay, where are you? I'm standing in front of the Heathrow Terminal 3 Departures sign. Him: I'm in a blue Vauxhall Spectra, I'm flashing my lights, oh, I can see you now. Oh, you're running... hahah.
So, meantime, while all the wallet fiasco was happening I was having an entirely different kind of fun at the check-in desk. You may remember my mentioning in an earlier entry the difficulty of editing your life down into 32kg. Well, when it got to the check-in desk it turned out that although he had checked and double checked my DFP (lets call him that in a funky youf abrevisationist kind of a way, DFP as in De Facto Partner) hadn't realised that I had the wrong kind of Quantas membership which meant that I was only entitled to 23kg. Not 32. And I was a bit over anyway but she was going to let it go. And then she got really strict when she realised I wasn't allowed 32 and I had to get rid of 17kg. There I was in the middle of Terminal 3 shamelessly chucking things out of my suitcases trying to get rid on 17kg, weighing and reweighing and still too heavy. My life spread out on the floor of terminal 3. The check in clock ticking. Thank heavens my parents were there, and thank heavens they keep a useful supply of bags for life in the back of the car.
Anyhow. Alls well that ends well. I got it down, if not entirely to 23kg low enough for her to take pity on me and let me board the airplane. Just when the check-in trauma had ended the wallet arrived and we legged in through security and straight onto the plane. And now we're here. Safe and sound.
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